Throughout this election season, my brother – who lives in the US – and I often commiserated about the presidential election and its direction, the worry rising particularly when the incumbent president, Joe Biden, was replaced by his not-exactly-popular Vice President, Kamala Harris. « I don’t trust white women, » I had then said. The entirety of my analysis kept boiling down to this point – I think the Democrats can pull it off and spare us the second term of the vilest incarnation of the White Male™, and I am hoping for it, but I don’t trust white women.

The men, I never counted on. I have been working for some years now on getting more women in politics, and back in 2020, when we did a diagnosis prior to launching the #fokyola campaign, the results were as expected. The campaign helped – a bit. We saw demonstrable changes in how people viewed the issue, and they started becoming more open, but there’s still a long way to go.

In my personal life, there aren’t necessarily many men I would count on either. Even the ones who love me to death – who would go above and beyond for me – they see me as their daughter, their niece, their friend, their (ex)girlfriend even, but not as a woman – not really. To them, I’m special. They love me. They try to let me espouse my feminist views in peace and even agree—to a degree – but there’ll be cracks where it’s obvious that love doesn’t supersede misogyny. I am still waiting for an uncle to realize why, when talking about men and women, he compared them to lions and cats – not even lions and lionesses, so they’d at least be in the same species. Maybe he’ll get back to me after reading this, will try his best and be good sport about it, but it won’t take long – and I am certain of this – before the mild misogyny leaps out of him again. There’s only one man I know who hasn’t let me down in this way yet, and I’m afraid to even say this because I worry I might jinx it.

Mind you, these are what one would call « good men » – men who are respectful, supportive, and defend their women. But here’s the kicker – you have to be theirs: their daughter, their sister, their friend, their partner, their family… There needs to be a possessive in front of a woman for them to care. Otherwise, women are like the Gazan children to Kamala Harris, something that can be ignored as a non-priority while important business – the business of being part of the most powerful class – is afoot.

Women in the US, however, have a vested interest in their well-being and still remember what it was like under Trump, so I wagered they could show up for Kamala Harris – and they did – except for one particular subset: the white woman. The one I refused to trust from the start. Because the white woman is White before she’s ever a woman. She counts on her man to protect her, no matter the cost to others.

Historically, she’s not completely wrong. The Western White human male tends to put his woman above all others in his quest for absolute dominion – under him, always, but above the others – and that’s generally enough.

The problem is, and has always been, that White women have shown us time and again that their loyalty lies with race over gender. For them, protection and privilege come hand-in-hand with white supremacy. They may enjoy their marriages and families but, when tested, their commitment to that privilege often supersedes any collective push toward true equality.

In the history of colonization, White women have occupied a complex space as both victims and enablers of power. They were the « civilized » face of the empire, there to help « tame » the « savages. » They used their womanhood to inspire sympathy and justify their actions while reaping the benefits of colonial violence. As missionaries and matrons, they took on the task of « civilizing » indigenous and enslaved populations, often wielding their gender as both a shield and a sword.

In the U.S., it was White women who stood at the forefront of segregationist movements, championing the preservation of “traditional values” in the face of Civil Rights advances. This was seen in the school integration battles where Southern White mothers became icons of resistance to desegregation. Their womanhood was weaponized to uphold White supremacy, casting them as protectors of purity and family even as they stood on the wrong side of history.

Even in feminist spaces, too many White women’s insistence on centering their experiences has led to numerous fractures in solidarity movements. Black feminists have long critiqued this exclusionary behavior, pointing out how White feminism fails to address the needs of women of color. Time and again, they’ve observed White women’s complicity in a system that marginalizes others, either through active exclusion or passive inaction.

When we think about these historical dynamics, it’s clear: the label “woman” is secondary. For too many, White supremacy is daddy, and they are its dutiful daughters – always ready to defend the family legacy.  They are Athena judging in favor of Orestes after he murdered his mother, because their loyalty lies with her father. Athena ruled against her own gender, rationalizing it by saying, “I am my father’s child”—and in doing so, set a precedent for loyalty to paternal authority over solidarity with the mother. In a similar way, white women have often aligned themselves with white supremacy, standing against other women, especially women of color, whenever their privilege or position of advantage was at stake.

So, as we look forward, my hope remains, but my faith in White women will remain measured. True transformation requires an acknowledgment of uncomfortable truths and the courage to confront one’s own privilege. I am still waiting for that moment.